Vale: Celeste Holm

Veteran actress Celeste Holm, best known for her film roles in All About Eve, High Society The Snake Pit and TV’s Falcon Crest has died, aged 95.

Holm recently spent two weeks in a hospital due to dehydration, but asked to be taken home last week.

She had a career spanning 70 years achieving fame on Broadway in the original production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! in 1943 in which she sang “I Cain’t Say No.”

Films included Three Little Girls in Blue, Carnival in Costa Rica, an Oscar as best supporting actress in Gentleman’s Agreement, plus Come to the Stable, The Snake Pit, The Tender Trap, High Society, Tom Sawyer, Three Men and a Baby and a role as the best friend of Bette Davis’ aging Broadway star ‘Margo Channing’ in 1950’s All About Eve.

“My agent didn’t want me to do ‘Eve.’ Can you imagine?” Holm told the Associated Press in 1997. “He was afraid ‘Miss Normal’ would get caught between two cats, Bette Davis and [co-star] Anne Baxter.”

On television, she starred in the short-lived, 1954 situation comedy Honestly Celeste and played a supporting role in the 1970-71 situation comedy Nancy. She also made frequent guest appearances and played the Fairy Godmother in the 1965 musical television production of Cinderella.

She received three Emmy nominations, including a 1979 nomination for her supporting role in the mini-series Backstairs at the White House.

She spent a season on the prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest in the mid-1980s. But her credits include plenty of TV roles including Loving, Promised Land, Whoopi, Third Watch, The Beat, Touched by an Angel, Cheers, Magnum PI, The Love Boat, Trapper John MD, Archie Bunker’s Place, Fantasy island, Wonder Woman, Disneyland, The Streets of San Francisco, Medical Center, The Fugitive and Doctor Kildare.

Source: LA Times